The Real Adventure eBook

She would have to wait. Accepted, root and branch,
as Rose was forced by her husband’s attitude
to accept it, a conclusion of that sort can be a wonderful
anodyne. And so it proved in her ease. Indeed,
within a day after her talk with Rodney, though it
had ended in total defeat, she felt like a person
awakened out of a nightmare. There had taken place,
somehow, an enormous letting-off of strain—­a
heavenly relaxation of spiritual muscles. It
was so good just to have him know; to have others
know, as all her world did within the next week!

Ultimately nothing was changed, of course. The
great thing that she had promised Portia she wouldn’t
fail in getting—­the real thing that should
solve the problem, equalize the disparity between her
husband and herself and give them a life together
in satisfying completeness beyond the joys of a pair
of lovers;—­that was still to be fought for.

She’d have to make that fight alone. Rodney
wouldn’t help her. He wouldn’t know
how to help her. Indeed, interpreting from the
way he winced under her questions and suggestions,
as if they wounded some essentially masculine, primitive
element of pride in him, it seemed rather more likely
that he’d resist her efforts—­fight
blindly against her. She must be more careful
about that when she took up the fight again; must
avoid hurting him if she could.

She hadn’t an idea on what lines the fight was
to be made. Perhaps before the time for its beginning,
a way would appear. The point was that for the
present, she’d have to wait—­coolly
and thoughtfully, not fritter her strength away on
futile struggles or harassments.

The tonic effect of that resolution was really wonderful.
She got her color back—­I mean more than
just the pink bloom in her cheeks—­and her
old, irresistible, wide slow smile. She’d
never been so beautiful as she was during the next
six months.

People who thought they loved her before—­Frederica
for example, found they hadn’t really, until
now. She dropped in on Eleanor Randolph one day,
after a morning spent with Rose, simply because she
was bursting with this idea and had to talk to somebody.
That was very like Frederica.

She found Eleanor doing her month’s bills, but
glad to shovel them into her desk, light up a cigarette,
and have a chat; a little rueful though, when she
found that Rose was to be the subject of it.

“She’s perfectly wonderful,” Frederica
said. “There’s a sort of look about
her ...”

“Oh, I know,” Eleanor said. “We
dined there last night.”

“Well, didn’t it just—­get you?”
insisted Frederica.

“It did,” said Eleanor. “It
also got Jim. He was still talking about her
when I went to sleep, about one o’clock.
I don’t a bit blame him for being perfectly
maudlin about her. As I say, I was a good deal
that way myself, though a half-hour’s steady
raving was enough for me. But poor old Jim!
She isn’t one little bit crazy about him, either—­unfortunately.”